A Drive, A Message, And Closure
by Selonianth
Summary: After they get back to New York Kate decides they need to have the talk they've been avoiding since the bar in L.A.


Disclaimer: Neither Castle nor BtVS belong to me, they belong to Andrew Marlowe and the inconquerable Joss Whedon respectively.

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Detective Beckett sighed even as the triple murderer they'd just caught was taken down to lockup. She'd told Castle a week ago, when the case started, that they couldn't have their talk while she was working the case. Kate needed to take a backseat to Detective Beckett untill they caught him and now they had. It was time for Kate to take the reins but she was afraid, afraid that if she let the part of her that was Kate take the reins that she'd collapse in a fit of tears and fury. The sorrow, rage, indignity, and helplessness leaving her in a torrent of emotion so powerful she'd fall apart.

Then Castle was at her side, his calm smile steadying her. Beckett didn't know if he knew how badly she needed him, but his presence at her side anchored her, kept Beckett in control, for now. When they reached his loft Kate would almost certainly rip the reins out of Beckett's hands and she wouldn't get them back. Not until she had come undone and lost any hope of hiding how much she loved him, how much she needed him.

"Hey Castle, suppose it's time for that talk huh?" Beckett smiled sardonically as she got up from her desk, donning her coat and giving Castle a small reassuring smile.

Castle was comfortably silent as they road the elevator to the garage. As the door opened he gently placed his hand on her back and guided her out and to his car, knowing after their talk that she'd be in no condition to drive, he could almost sense her control inching toward a cliff.

Beckett was strangely silent on the drive back, and in the elevator, to his loft until they exited the elevator outside Castle's floor to find a small glass orb on his coffee table with a note. Castle picked up the note and Beckett couldn't help but ask the obvious, "What's it say?"

"It says 'Play Me'..." Castle replied, as the word 'Play' left his lips the glass ball glowed and projected a light into the air coalescing into the image of a bloodied Senator Bracken.

Buffy's voice filled the room, "So Senator, you weren't happy just killing innocent kids and animals to gain power, no... you wanted more. You decided to try and ascend to pure demon status, what's worse is you weren't even good at it. You know the mayor of Sunnydale tried to ascend too? 'Course he was actually good at it. He was patient, even founded the damn place to help his cause. He actually pulled it off for a second or two before I blew up the high-school with him in it. You on the other hand, tried to do what took him over a century and failed in just a couple decades. It can't be much of a surprise that we found out, much less came to stop you."

"You're a slayer, you won't kill me," Bracken wheezed, his voice sounding like a couple ribs were broken.

"See, that's where you're wrong. I'm not a slayer, I'm The Slayer and I learned a while ago that evil men, men willing to sacrifice an innocent soul to demons for instance, can't just be locked up. You'll just escape and cause more trouble," Buffy paused, a red axe swinging into view and spinning in Buffy's hand, "Oh, by the way. Johanna Beckett's daughter says hello." The shock was still on his face when the axe swung through taking his head off.

Three seconds after the message ended the glass ball blackened and split in half. Castle slowly turned to his partner and found her staring at the broken glass ball and he hurried to her just in time to catch her as she sagged, sobbing to the ground.

Kate couldn't stop crying, ever ounce of fury she hadn't let out, every second of frustration she'd refused to acknowledged, every doubt she hadn't been able to ignore, it all left her body as she sobbed into Cas- no, Rick's shoulder, her arms clinging to him, her ears aware he was speaking to her but unable to hear the words. Still she clung like a woman afraid to drown, and perhaps she was.

Neither could tell you how long he held her, or how long she cried because it was an eternity spent in the blink of an eye. When they became aware of the world around them Kate smiled. She had held all of that pain for so long and now it was over, the man who had killed her mother was knew, as a detective that she should have laid it in the hands of the law but somehow she knew a higher law than the law of man had acted and she was ok with that.

Shaking her head Kate looked up at Rick and smiled, then she kissed him, nearly three years of want, two of need, pouring from her body into his and, once he recovered, back into her as he kissed back.

The next several hours were a blur to them both as clothes flew, buttons broke and screams and howls filled the loft until they found themselves naked, Kate using most of Rick's body as a body pillow, on his multi-thousand thread-count Egyptian cotton sheets, and being mildy surprised they'd made it that far, whispered softly to her lover, "I love you Rick Castle."

Rick took a couple breaths, trying his hardest to get his racing heart under control, whispered back, "I love you too Kate Beckett."


End file.
